Location
San Diego, California
Presentation Date
28 Mar 2001, 4:25 pm - 4:40 pm
Abstract
The earthquake that hit Athens, Greece on September 7, 1999 was an unexpected disaster. It originated from a previously unknown seismotectonic structure, at about 18 km to the west of the historical center, and left behind 143 casualties, about 100,000 homeless and 100 totally collapsed buildings. On the other hand, it provided a number of reliable strong motion recordings and well-defined patterns of damage at sites with known geological and geotechnical conditions. Evaluation of this information shows that the very stiff soils of the Athens basin amplified seismic ground motion by an average of 40% compared to nearby outcropping soft rocks. In addition, the 40m in height, 15-3O° inclination cliffs of Kifissos river canyon may have aggravated the seismic motion by an additional 50% on average. Modem seismic codes totally oversee the first of these effects and underscore the second.
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Meeting Name
4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics
Publisher
University of Missouri--Rolla
Document Version
Final Version
Rights
© 2001 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
File Type
text
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Bouckovalas, George D. and Kouretzis, George, "Review of Soil and Topography Effects in the September 7, 1999 Athens (Greece) Earthquake" (2001). International Conferences on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics. 7.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/icrageesd/04icrageesd/session14/7
Included in
Review of Soil and Topography Effects in the September 7, 1999 Athens (Greece) Earthquake
San Diego, California
The earthquake that hit Athens, Greece on September 7, 1999 was an unexpected disaster. It originated from a previously unknown seismotectonic structure, at about 18 km to the west of the historical center, and left behind 143 casualties, about 100,000 homeless and 100 totally collapsed buildings. On the other hand, it provided a number of reliable strong motion recordings and well-defined patterns of damage at sites with known geological and geotechnical conditions. Evaluation of this information shows that the very stiff soils of the Athens basin amplified seismic ground motion by an average of 40% compared to nearby outcropping soft rocks. In addition, the 40m in height, 15-3O° inclination cliffs of Kifissos river canyon may have aggravated the seismic motion by an additional 50% on average. Modem seismic codes totally oversee the first of these effects and underscore the second.
